APHORISM XIX.

FIELD

The Romanists teach that sins committed after Baptism (that is, for the immense majority of Christians having Christian parents, all their sins from the cradle to the grave) are not so remitted for Christ's sake, but that we must suffer that extremity of punishment which they deserve: and therefore either we must afflict ourselves in such sort and degree of extremity as may answer the demerit of our sins, or be punished by God, here or in the world to come, in such degree and sort that his justice may be satisfied. [As the encysted venom, or poison-bag, beneath the adder's fang, so does this doctrine lie beneath the tremendous power of the Romish Hierarchy. The demoralizing influence of this dogma, find that it curdled the very life-blood in the veins of Christendom, it was given to Luther, beyond all men since Paul, to see, feel, and promulgate. And yet in his large Treatise on Repentance, how near to the spirit of this doctrine--even to the very walls and gates of Babylon--was Jeremy Taylor driven, in recoiling from the fanatical extremes of the opposite error!] But they that are orthodox, teach that it is injustice to require the paying of one debt twice. * * * It is no less absurd to say, as the Papists do, that our satisfaction is required as a condition, without which Christ's satisfaction is not applicable unto us, than to say, Peter hath paid the debt of John, and he to whom it was due accepteth of the payment on the condition that John pay it himself also. * * * The satisfaction of Christ is communicated and applied unto us without suffering the punishment that sin deserveth, [and essentially involveth], upon the condition of our faith and 247 repentance. [To which I would add; Without faith there is no power of repentance: without a commencing repentance no power to faith: and that it is in the power of the will either to repent or to have faith in the Gospel sense of the words, is itself a consequence of the redemption of mankind, a free gift of the Redeemer: the guilt of its rejection, the refusing to avail ourselves of the power, being all that we can consider as exclusively attributable to our own act].